The Ferrocarril Central travels from Lima to Huancayo, Peru. Photo / Getty Images
The Ferrocarril Central travels from Lima to Huancayo, Peru. Photo / Getty Images
From day trips to longer journeys, we round up the Southern Hemisphere's best trips by rail.
DAY TRIPS
Kuranda Scenic Railway, Australia It may only span 37km, but the Kuranda Scenic Railway, which links Cairns, Queensland's gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, and Kuranda, "the village in the rainforest", certainly lives up to its name. The journey takes about two hours, and the line rises dramatically from sea level to nearly 335m, snaking its way through the Barron Gorge National Park, and offering spectacular views back towards Cairns and the Coral Sea.
Buenos Aires to Tigre, Argentina Once the largest network in Latin America, the Argentine railways are much shrunken and shoddily maintained. The best-kept, most reliable suburban line runs from the handsome Retiro Mitre terminal in Buenos Aires — designed by British architects, and recently given a thorough polish and clean-up — to Tigre, a town and river delta that has long been the weekend breakaway for tired city folk. The train departs/returns every 11-12 minutes from dawn until 9.30/10pm.
The 2016 Kaikoura earthquake severed the railway between Christchurch and the ferry terminal at Picton, but it reopened in December. The journey — in panoramic carriages with a buffet car — is full of variety, taking passengers through thick forest, past densely stocked sheep farms and an extraordinary pink lagoon of salt production, but it is the long stretches beside the Pacific Ocean that are the highlight.
Views abound on the Coastal Pacific. Photo / Supplied
Quito is 2850m above sea-level. Ecuador's second city, Guayaquil, is on the Pacific coast. Trains operate along the entire line (including the posh four-day Tren Crucero service), but a high point — and a popular day trip — is the 12km zigzagging section known as the Devil's Nose for the mountain on which it was built in the 1900s. Connecting Alausi and Sibambe, it drops, or climbs, 500m in around 45 minutes. Tren Ecuador operates two trips a day, Tuesday to Sunday.
OVERNIGHTERS
Blue Train, South Africa There are some journeys that you don't want to end. One is South Africa's luxurious Blue Train between Cape Town and Pretoria. An additional 10 hours are being added to the schedule, giving passengers a second night and allowing a visit to Kimberley's famous "big hole" for diamonds. A new observation car is being added to the train set that lacked one, bringing them both up to the same standard.
Shosholoza Meyl, South Africa There are faster and smarter ways of travelling the length of South Africa, but none offer as much luxury on a budget as Shosholoza Meyl's Premier Classe service. The train trundles up and down the same route between Johannesburg and Cape Town as the legendary Blue Train, but at a fraction of the cost. Single, double and four berth compartments with sleeper couches are comfortable and there are two restaurants and lounge bars.
Great Southern Australia To Australia's two luxury all-inclusive tourist trains, the Indian Pacific and the Ghan, will this year be added a third, the Great Southern, which will travel between Brisbane and Adelaide from December. The choice of direction determines the off-train excursions and number of nights on board. The two-night northbound option departs from Adelaide and travels through the rugged mountain ranges of the Grampians, stops in the country's capital of Canberra and, skirting Sydney, reaches the Pacific Ocean in New South Wales for a "Beachside Experience" before arrival in Brisbane. Southbound trains from Brisbane enjoy a late afternoon run beside the sea along the New South Wales coast, a tour of Hunter Valley vineyards and an excursion along the Great Ocean Road.
The train taking its name from the historic cameleers of northern Australia — supposedly from Afghanistan though actually from northwest India — runs the 2979km from Adelaide through the country's "red centre" to Alice Springs and Darwin. The year-round two-night option offers stops at Katherine for a boat ride between the towering limestone walls of the crocodile-populated Nitmiluk Gorge and at Alice Springs. The seasonal southbound-only three-night tour provides the opportunity for a day at the underground opal-mining town of Coober Pedy.
An improbable feat of Victorian engineering that blasted through mountains, clung to precipices and spanned gut-churning gorges in the Peruvian Andes to climb higher than any standard-gauge railway in the world. In an epic 320km journey from Lima to the mountain market town of Huancayo, it negotiates tunnels, bridges and zigzag sections to a pass 4800m above sea level. Staff include a nurse with oxygen.
